


In Which Crowley Attempts to Make Sushi

by politeanarchy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bad Ideas, Cooking, Good Ideas, Hugs, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sushi, a bit of snuggling, things that are not supposed to be on fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politeanarchy/pseuds/politeanarchy
Summary: Inspired by thecartoon that Neil Gaiman posted on Twitter. Crowley makes sushi. It doesn't go the way he'd hoped.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 79





	In Which Crowley Attempts to Make Sushi

This was _such_ a good idea.

Crowley stood at his table, arranging his sushi-making supplies. He'd seasoned the rice, sliced cucumbers and avocado into beautiful little strips, likewise the fish. He'd admired the crackly green-black sheets of nori. He had one of those bamboo rolling mats. He even had a jar of pickled ginger and a little tin of instant wasabi powder.

He took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of the ingredients, and allowed himself to imagine how pleased and impressed Aziraphale might be, when Crowley offered him an elegantly-arranged plate of sushi.

He carefully extracted a sheet of nori from the packet, set it on the rolling mat, and began.

A short time later, he was curled in a fetal ball under his table, resolutely _not_ weeping and wondering how the heaven he was going to get all the thrice-blessed rice starch off his fingers. How did it manage to be so sticky? How did humans put this stuff together, anyway? How had any of them even figured it out in the first place? No, the humans were clever, it was just him who was completely useless and incompetent.

This had been _such_ a bad idea.

The only thing saving it from being an unmitigated disaster was that there was no one to witness this particular shame. He'd mentioned the possibility of sushi, but hadn't said anything about making it himself. That part was meant to be a surprise. At least he'd had the sense to try this alone, in his own kitchen, instead of suggesting to Aziraphale that they might work on it together. He just needed to clean everything up, hide the evidence, and order take-away. As he was thinking this, there was a brisk knock on his door.

Shit.

His first impulse was to stay perfectly silent, and hope that whoever-it-was would assume he wasn't at home, and would go away. Then he remembered that the only person who would be likely to get as far as his door, and who would also knock instead of just breaking and entering, was Aziraphale. Who knew perfectly well that Crowley was at home, because Crowley had invited him over for a visit. Which was now imminent.

_Shit._

He lay there, looking bleakly up at the underside of the table, listening to the sound of his door being opened (oh, right, he’d adjusted his wards to let Aziraphale in automatically, because he was an _idiot_), hearing Aziraphale's footsteps tap-tapping apologetically down his hallway, and weighing the relative merits of (a) miracling himself to Tierra del Fuego to start a new life as, well, he'd worry about that when he got there, or (b) simply discorporating on the spot.

"Hello, my dear, I'm a bit early I'm afraid, I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time." Aziraphale's voice was getting closer and closer. "I brought some of my favorite green tea, shall I brew us a pot?" The footsteps stopped. There was a pause, a faint _clink_ as of someone setting a tin of tea on the table overhead, perhaps a slight clearing of the throat. "Crowley, whatever are you doing under the table?"

Trying not to whimper too audibly, Crowley gathered his wits together (as much as he was able) and resigned himself to his fate. He wriggled himself out from under the table, and tried to make it look like he'd merely been trying out some relaxing yoga as part of his sushi preparations.

"Ooh, I didn't know you knew how to make sushi," said Aziraphale brightly. "Doesn't it smell lovely?"

Crowley made a small, strangled noise, at which Aziraphale paused and visibly re-oriented his attention toward _distressed friend_ rather than _food preparation._ The angel took a breath, and seemed about to say something, then stopped and looked encouragingly at Crowley instead.

"I, er, _don't_ know how to make sushi. And. I. Um. Ran into a bit of difficulty."

Aziraphale considered this, considered Crowley, considered the array of sushi ingredients scattered across the surface of the table, and asked tentatively, "May I try?"

Crowley nodded, warily.

Aziraphale stepped up to the table, and began re-arranging the components of Crowley's first, failed maki, nudging the strips of fish and vegetable back into an orderly line. When he had them placed satisfactorily, he carefully tweaked the nori to the very edge of the rolling mat, and curled the whole business around. Getting started was a little tricky, but once he'd got the middle to work, it only took a few seconds to roll the whole thing into a tidy cylinder. He pulled away the bamboo mat with a flourish, and displayed the finished roll as though it were something he'd just pulled out of a hat. "There," he said with some satisfaction. "That looks all right."

"Hmph," said Crowley. "Have you done this before?"

"Not as such, no."

Crowley answered with a wailing growl of disgust at himself and his hopeless ineptitude.

"Crowley! What on earth is wrong? You're all tense." Aziraphale reached out and rubbed a soothing hand over Crowley's back. When he wasn't immediately shrugged off or brushed away, he tried pressing a little harder into knotted muscles with his thumbs, and felt them relax just a little. That seemed like a good sign. He shifted himself around so he could work more thoroughly along Crowley's shoulders. After a few minutes of this, Crowley huffed an irritable sigh.

"It looks easy when you do it. When I tried, I just made a complete mess of things. Like I always do."

"My dear boy." Aziraphale stopped rubbing Crowley's back, and instead wrapped his arms around in a gentle hug, tucking his chin over one shoulder. "I may not do much cooking, but I _have_ spent at least a thousand years learning how to repair books using purely human methods. Which means I have quite a lot of experience handling delicate materials." As though to emphasize the point, he unwound his arms and went back to kneading the knots out of Crowley's spine. "And of course, I always enjoy watching real sushi chefs at work. So I have a fair idea of how it's supposed to go."

Crowley relaxed a little more, drooping into something that more closely resembled his usual slouch. Aziraphale took him by the shoulders and turned him gently around so they were face to face. "The really important thing I've learned, though," he said earnestly, "is how to be bad at things."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You weren't around when I was learning the gavotte—" here Aziraphale stopped Crowley from interjecting something rude and distracting him from the point he was trying to make, "—but you _have_ seen my magic act."

"It's true that no one could possibly claim you weren't bad at that."

"Yes, thank you," said Aziraphale tartly. "The point is that for quite some time I was _even worse_ at it."

"You know, I never really thought of that," said Crowley. "I suppose I must have always assumed that you were using miracles to learn sleight-of-hand, even if you weren't bothering to do proper magic in the tricks themselves."

"No. What little I have learned, I did the hard way. The human way."

"But _why?"_ asked Crowley, because every time he'd tried anything like that, it turned out awful. Like his miserable attempt at making sushi.

"At first, it was because I wanted to understand how humans managed to do so much, without any of our...convenient shortcuts." He made a sketchy, _miracle-invoking_ gesture in the air. "After I'd tried it a few times, though, I realized being bad at things is a skill in its own right."

Aziraphale paused, because he had begun to suspect he sounded like an idiot. Crowley looked skeptical but curious, and made a small inquisitive sound by way of encouragement.

"Look, _everything_ humans do, they start out being bad at. They have to learn it all from nothing, in the short amount of time they have here on Earth. Can you even _imagine_ what that must be like?" Crowley shook his head, silently. "No. Neither can I, really. But I do know, now, what it's like to go from being bad at something, to being slightly better at it, to being adequately good for most purposes."

Crowley took this in, thinking about the implications. "No wonder Heaven can't make any sense of you."

"No, they've never liked mediocrity. Allowing oneself to be sullied by a deliberate lack of perfection." Aziraphale smiled gently. "Once you've been bad at something, really embarrassingly stupidly bad at it, and then practiced and learned enough to get better, it's easier to learn other things. You stop worrying quite so much about whether you're making mistakes, and start paying attention to how to make the mistakes more effectively. Being incompetent becomes, if not comfortable, at least familiar. And recognizable as temporary."

"What does this have to do with sushi, again?"

"Here. Let's wash our hands, and you can have another go. I'll help you."

"You'll help me be bad at it?"

"Just so."

They returned to the table. Crowley sliced some more fish and cucumber. "Do you suppose there's a way to spread rice on the nori without gluing most of it to your fingers?" he asked.

"Use the rice paddle, I think. And if you have any vinegared water left over from seasoning the rice, you can dip your fingers in it, to keep them from sticking."

Crowley tried it. It did seem to be working a little better, this time, but this wasn't the part that had really given him trouble, before. With enormous trepidation, he lined up filling ingredients on top of the rice.

This was where it was all going to go wrong, wasn't it? He looked at Aziraphale. Aziraphale looked at him. Then stepped close, right up next to Crowley, and said "Put your hands _here_ and _here_." Crowley did, grinning a little nervously. Aziraphale carefully put his hands around Crowley's, guiding fingers and thumbs to wrap around the bamboo mat. "Like this."

With Aziraphale's help, Crowley successfully started the roll, and then when Aziraphale let go, Crowley was able to finish it by himself. His completed roll was a little lumpy and ragged looking, but it held together. He hardly knew what to think. He and Aziraphale smiled giddily at each other, there in his too-shiny kitchen. "Oh, well done!" said Aziraphale. "Let's make some more."

They did. They took turns spreading out rice and rolling up filling until they ran out of ingredients, and had a modest array of rolls lined up and waiting to be cut into pieces.

"You'd better do the honors, I think," said Aziraphale, waving at Crowley's large collection of sleek, expensive knives.

"Happy to, but don't you want to try cutting the ones you made?" asked Crowley. "It's got to be easier than rolling them."

"That's not the difficulty, I'm afraid," said Aziraphale, looking like he was embarrassed and hoping that Crowley wouldn't ask him why.

"What is it, then? Thought you enjoyed being bad at things."

"I'm _not_ bad at this," answered the angel, testily. "Oh, fine. Maybe it won't be a problem." He selected a medium-sized knife, and held it in front of himself, as though it might suddenly give him an electric shock.

Crowley still wasn't sure what was going on, but he shrugged, and picked up a knife for himself. In doing so, he managed to knock another one out of the knife block, and it clattered onto the table. Aziraphale flinched at the sound. The air went WHOOMPH, and the blade of the knife he was holding was suddenly wreathed in flames.

Crowley immediately burst into laughter, and Aziraphale looked disgusted. "Right, very funny. Do you have any idea how utterly ruinous this sort of thing is to a lovely rare roast beef? And I don't think it will do the sushi much good, either."

"Aziraphale, why is my best cooking knife currently on fire?"

"I'm not sure," said Aziraphale wretchedly. "I think it's some kind of defensive reflex. Ever since we met your boss—"

"Ex-boss."

"Yes, him. I've had a tendency to turn any knife I pick up into, well, _this_."

"Can you turn it off?"

"Sometimes. If I concentrate." Aziraphale concentrated. The flames flickered out and disappeared. "I can usually manage all right with butter knives, but anything that's even slightly sharp..."

Still snickering a bit, Crowley began cutting his sushi roll into sections. "Tell you what, I'll slice up the maki, and you make that tea you mentioned. And then we'll eat."

"That sounds lovely, my dear."

The plate of sushi that Crowley eventually offered to Aziraphale was perhaps not quite as elegant as the ones they usually consumed in restaurants, but Aziraphale did look delightfully pleased and impressed by it. He poured Crowley a cup of tea, and they settled down happily to eat.

The evening progressed in companionable, leisurely stages. At some point they switched from tea to sake. Once they had finished eating, they moved from the dining table to the couch, so that Crowley could put on a movie* for them to ignore while they continued their conversation.

*Kurosawa's _The Hidden Fortress_

"So, are you really saying that all your cutlery turns into flaming swords these days?"

"I'm afraid so. I'm hoping it will wear off, eventually." An expression of annoyance flitted briefly across Aziraphale's face, then was replaced by a small smile. "In the meantime, I've been finding that I can use my bread knife to make toast in the morning. Although I've had to bless my cutting board to be fireproof."

"Oh, angel. It's a good thing you're so resourceful. And so fond of toast."

Aziraphale smiled ruefully. "I suppose it's only to be expected that we would still be suffering some after-effects of all our recent excitement."

"Hmm, yes. It might explain why I'm suddenly taking up peculiar human hobbies like cookery." Crowley looked thoughtful for a moment, and then added, somewhat reluctantly, "And then getting all upset about them."

"I'm glad you were brave enough to try. It worked out well, I thought." 

Crowley snorted. "Hardly counts as brave, does it? Pretty low stakes."

"Anything so far outside your usual range of experience is likely to be intimidating, no matter what the stakes." Aziraphale leaned against Crowley, reassuringly. "We've had enough high stakes to last us quite a while."

"Yeah, I'll say." Crowley pushed himself even closer to Aziraphale, and shuddered slightly. "If I can be brave about stupid unimportant things, maybe I'll stop having so many nightmares about the big ones."

Aziraphale's arm was warm and solid, wrapped around Crowley, reminding him that he didn't have to face his fears alone. "Nightmares?"

"About being there, in Tadfield, you know, at the air base." Crowley's voice was low. "Only instead of us being ourselves, we're a couple of helpless worms trapped on the pavement after the rain. Just waiting for something huge to step on us. And then he's there, and he's so _big,_ and so _angry,_ all ready to crush us out of existence." His breath caught a little. "And Gabriel and Beelzebub are there too, _laughing._ That's the worst part. Everyone is so happy to see us destroyed."

Aziraphale pulled him into a proper hug, rubbing slow circles on Crowley's back. "Oh, my dear. How awful."

"I've tried staying awake, but it's not much better."

"Would it help if you, er, had company?" asked Aziraphale, and even by the dim flickering light of the disregarded movie, Crowley could tell that his cheeks had turned pink.

If nothing else, it startled him enough to stop the dark spiralling of his thoughts. He raised an eyebrow, and looked more like his usual self. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"Just that I'd be very happy to remind you, whenever it might be necessary, that I for one am extremely glad neither of us has been destroyed." Aziraphale regarded him fondly. "Beyond that, well. I might be willing to negotiate. If you had anything else in mind."

"Thanks, angel. I'd like it if you would," Crowley cleared his throat, a little awkwardly. "Stay. Tonight. If that's all right."

"Only too happy to oblige, dear boy."

Suddenly Crowley laughed and grinned, a proper wickedly-demonic grin. "I know what else I have in mind!"

"What's that?" asked Aziraphale suspiciously.

"Tomorrow morning, for breakfast, you have to show me the thing with the toast. I'm sure I can provide you with a fireproof cutting board."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my Tumblr](https://politeanarchy.tumblr.com).
> 
> Also! I found one version of the post that had the idea about the flaming kitchen knives. It's here: <https://demonic-mnemonic.tumblr.com/post/188949367512/concept-aziraphale-cant-pick-up-literally-any>


End file.
